CLIMATE: Cultivating Resilient Food Systems

Climate change has had a massive impact on communities around the world, impacts that will only increase unless global action is taken. Canada has already seen heat waves, floods, and storms with significant social and economic costs. These challenges are significantly worse in countries where capacities to adapt to climate change are more limited. Canada’s commitment to the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact includes bolder global action on mitigation, adaptation, finance, and international collaboration. Increased international cooperation is critical to support healthy ecosystems, resilient infrastructures, and food security.  

Food systems are a critical entry point in our fight against climate change. Food insecurity and malnutrition are rising in countries around the world, and most of the two billion people globally working in the food system live in poverty. Women and girls are often hit the hardest by the impacts of food insecurity and malnutrition and face multiple obstacles in accessing healthy and nutritious diets including poverty, discrimination, and social norms. 

Even before the pandemic, the world was off-track in eradicating malnutrition and meeting the zero hunger Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets. Since the pandemic, the number of individuals experiencing malnutrition and hunger has drastically increased with upwards of 160 million new people experiencing malnutrition since 2019 and nearly 690 million people undernourished globally. Of those malnourished, 45 million people worldwide are at extreme risk of famine, a staggering 300% increase over the past six months because of the impacts of COVID-19, climate change and increased conflict. This has pushed the world to the brink of a malnutrition crisis with the potential to be even more devastating than the COVID-19 pandemic. While malnutrition costs the global economy $3.5 trillion every year, every dollar invested in nutrition generates between $4 and $35 dollars.

Building resilient food systems and tackling malnutrition is a critical in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, reversing the economic and health devastation linked to COVID-19 and eliminating gender inequality. A food system includes all the ways food is produced, processed, delivered, accessed, and consumed and how these intersect with human health, society, economies, and the environment. A more resilient food system is one in which individuals and households can cope with shocks, adapt to change, and transform away from unsustainable methods of living. Working towards a more resilient food system requires a deep understanding of specific environmental, social, cultural, economic, and historical contexts. It also requires investment in evidence-based approaches that ensure food systems provide high-quality and nutrition-rich outputs, meeting the needs of healthy diets. 

SOLUTIONS: A Sustainable Path

At the G7 Summit in June 2021, Canada committed to doubling its international climate financing to $5.3 billion over the next five years, including increasing support for adaptation, as well as nature-based solutions. As part of this commitment, the Government of Canada should: increase investments in agriculture that support resilient food by at least $100 million/year to reach a minimum of $400 million/year. 

These investments should support developing country food producers so they can anticipate, prevent, or limit the impact of shocks, and transform their livelihoods. 

• Nature-based solutions. Conservation agriculture, agroforestry and other agriculture nature-based solutions can increase agricultural production, fight climate change, and enhance nature and biodiversity.

• Diversity. Invest in greater diversity of crop varieties and livestock breeds, livelihoods, and landscapes, alongside access to more diverse foods will support resilience.

• Nutrition-sensitive approaches to production and consumption.

• Learning and innovation. Enable improved networking and collaboration with other institutions, including government and actors along the agricultural value chain, through farmer-to-farmer visits, individual experiments, and collaborative learning, training, and education.

• Strong farm organizations. Farm organizations, including women-led organizations, can help food producers improve their capacities to generate knowledge, access market information, represent their concerns, empower women, and provide inclusive services in rural areas.

• Emergency preparedness, such as through early warning systems and improved data.

• Greater agency. Empowerment for all individuals and groups active in the food system to make their own decisions about what foods they eat; what foods they produce; how that food is produced, processed, and distributed; and to garner opportunities to engage in processes that shape food system policies and governance. This is especially important for women and girls who continue to face gender discrimination throughout the food system.

• Links between humanitarian assistance and development. Support disaster responses that move from emergency responses to early recovery and development phases, providing a foundation for building resilience and moving out of poverty in the longer term.

Now is the time to address one of the world’s greatest challenges: providing healthy and nutritious diets for a growing world population in a way that sustains and strengthens our natural environment. A new investment by Canada in climate resilient food systems will support food producers in meeting complex challenges—and support Canada in meeting key Sustainable Development Goals.